Muslim honour killing book cancelled over safety fears

Another European publisher has fallen victim to the continent's blasphemy laws – blasphemy against Islam, that is. As the German press is reporting:

Dusseldorf – A German publisher has cancelled plans to publish a mass-market novel out of fears that it might face violent protests due to a rude reference to the Koran, Der Spiegel magazine reported Saturday. The crime novel – about the "honour killing" of a Muslim woman – had been scheduled for September publication, but the Droste publishing company of Dusseldorf decided not to print it after all, the magazine said in a story to appear in its Monday issue.

It said the publisher had first asked the author, Gabriele Brinkmann, writing under the pen name WW Domsky, to tone down dialogue in "To Those Worthy of Honour" which might be construed as offensive, but she had refused.

Spiegel reported that the offensive phrase in question was a character saying: "You can shove your Koran up …"

Publisher Felix Droste had asked an expert on Islamic society to study whether the crime story's text could compromise the safety of his firm or his family, and the expert suggested the phrase be modified.

But the author refused to alter it to "You can shove your honour up …"

Droste wrote back that riots over Danish cartoons that poked fun at the Prophet Mohammed in 2005 showed that anyone publishing insults to Islam was putting their safety at risk, Spiegel said.

Over the weekend I heard Mark Steel on the wireless mocking the idea that there was an "Islamisation" of Europe, doing an impression of a call to prayer on Radio Surrey. Funny as always, but wrong – Islamisation does not mean waking up one day to find the newsreaders sporting a massive beard and a hook on his hand, or the local hoodie having his hand cut off in public, any more than climate change means immediate and dramatic Hollywood-style disasters.

Islamisation refers to small but significant erosions of our freedom, bit by bit, demand by demand, concession by concession. The initial victims are Muslims themselves: for many Muslim women and girls living in Britain, especially those 20,000 said to be at risk from genital mutilation or the smaller number threatened with honour killings or with being murdered for apostasy, Islamisation is already a reality.

For the rest of us it is less immediate and less noticeable, but a little bit of our freedom dies every time someone is cowed into silence.